David Zaslav is selling off parts of Warner Bros. while fighting battles on every other front.
Hitsdailydouble.com says Zaslav has hired top music lawyer Allen Grubman to find a buyer for the music publishing assets of the Warner films.
This isn’t Warner Chappell publishing. It has nothing to do with Warner Music, a separate company.
No, these are the soundtracks to popular Warner movies including Purple Rain,” “Evita,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Rent” several “Batman” films and many more titles, as well as songs included in films such as “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca.”
It’s actually unclear what the assets are — these are just a guess. Do they include the Clint Eastwood films, with all of the music written for them? And how will the Prince estate figure into a sale of “Purple Rain” or “Batman”?
Zaslav is said to figure the whole catalog is worth over $1 billion. So this would just be a half ownership. Currently Universal Music Publishing administers the rights to all this music. And that’s weird. Not Warner Chappell? I guess he hopes UMG, the most successful music company, will help bail out his overall debt.
What’s next? I guess we’ll see if Bugs Bunny has a price.
